


like a stained glass window

by ere_the_sun_rises (orphan_account)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, First Kiss, Fix-It, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-01-09
Packaged: 2017-11-24 05:49:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/ere_the_sun_rises
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merida is broken inside. Jon Snow knows this, perhaps better than anyone, that there is a hole in her heart where the love should be. But she is so broken, there are so many places where things are missing, where pieces should fit together but can't. Some men would see a mess and leave her.</p>
<p>Not Jon. Jon sees the fragments of something beautiful, lying around in faded shades of red and gold, green and blue. And he rolls his sleeves up to fix it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like a stained glass window

She is broken inside. He sees it in the way she smiles, halfheartedly, almost forced. He sees it in the way she walks, shoulders hunched like she has given up. He sees it in the way her eyes look, small and sad and hopeless.

Merida is broken inside. Jon Snow knows this, perhaps better than anyone, that there is a hole in her heart where the love should be. But she is so broken, there are so many places where things are missing, where pieces should fit together but can't. Some men would see a mess and leave her.

Not Jon. Jon sees the fragments of something beautiful, lying around in faded shades of red and gold, green and blue. And he rolls his sleeves up to fix it.

He brushes the dust from the fragments, piece by piece. They are brilliant hues, cardinal feather crimson, spring-grass green, gleaming yellow gold, starry night-sky blue. He lays the pieces before him, can see where some may go together. There are a great many jagged edges and splintering cracks. This will not be easy to fix, but Jon is resolute.

He sands the edges down with gentle words and smiles. At first she is wary. Merida is not used to someone being kind just for the sake of kindness, and she is tense, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Gradually, though, the sharp ends wear down into smooth edges, and Jon can slide them together, trying to find out where each goes.

He fills in the cracks with soft touches. A hand on her shoulder, an arm around her waist, an easy foot rub at the end of a long day. Again, he knows that she wonders after his motives. She looks at him, her expressions carefully guarded behind her eyes. Sometimes she shrugs away from his hands, afraid of their intentions. Hands have not been kind to her, especially not the hands of men. Jon is patient. He knew it would not be easy. Eventually, she accepts his touch. He can hold her smaller hand in his own, wrap her inside of his arms and use the pad of his thumb to brush her tears away. The fragments seem to gleam, as if from the reflected light of a distant star.

He begins to find where each piece fits. Slowly, one after the other, they begin to click into place; when he makes her laugh, tells her a secret, knows her coffee order as well as his own, goes out with her to lay under a tree and look for shapes in the clouds. With each fragment that slides into place, she seems happier, though somehow more...restless. Jon could not say what made it so.

One day, he brings her tea when she is upset. Another fragment falls into its place, and suddenly, the pieces that were all around his feet have all gone.

And yet, something is not quite right.

There is still one empty space. Jon looks around, for once at a loss. There are no pieces left to fit into this hole. His hands are empty and still it is not finished. Had he missed a piece? Had something happened, before he had come along, to damage her so badly that one of the fragments had been lost forever? He doesn't want it to be true. He wants to see her whole again. He knows, there must be something to fit in there that he has somehow overlooked.

Jon looks into the deep blue pools of her eyes, strikingly unguarded. The veil that has always hidden her feelings from him has been lifted. And when Jon looks, he understands. He knows what is missing from the picture.

When Jon kisses her lips, she stiffens at first. He cups her face inside of his hands, presses close to her, because she has to understand what he understands now, that they are one and the same and forever bound.

When she begins to kiss him back he sees it happen. That last black chasm in the middle disappears, as a storm-cloud grey slides into its place. He knows that the last piece is the part of him that he has given to her, because he loves her so. And he knows, somewhere inside of him, there is some piece of her filling him out, in cardinal feather red or starry night-sky blue, spring grass green or gleaming yellow gold.

Now Merida does not shy away from his hands or look at him strangely when he smiles at her. She sleeps against him every night, her ear pressed against the steady beat of his heart, his hand covering her own. He sees others staring at her as she passes, wondering if she is the same woman. Jon knows she isn't. Now she is whole, and the little stormy grey piece of him completes her, as the vibrant fragment of herself completes him. People say he is different, too. Perhaps that piece of her has filled out a hole he hadn't felt.

It had taken a lot of time and a lot of work to piece it all back together, but the end had been more than worth it, for Jon. Because now she smiles, and he thinks she could outshine the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> first work on the Archive...let me know what you think and look out for more coming soon. :)


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